him suddenly radiant with the glory of morning. It is
by this union of unexpectedness with fitness, of solidity with
brilliancy, of remoteness with instantaneous presence, in his figures,
denoting overflow of resources, a divine plenitude, so that we feel
after Shakespeare has said his best things, that he could go on saying
more and better,--it is especially by this lustrous, ever-teeming
fullness of life, this creative readiness, that Shakespeare throws a
farther and whiter and a broader light than Dante. Nor does Dante's
page glisten, as Shakespeare's so often does, with metaphor, or
compressed similes, that at times with a word open the spiritual
sphere; not super-imposed as cold ornament, but inter-tissued with the
web of thought, upflashings from a deep sea of mind, to quiver on the
surface, as on the calm level of the Atlantic you may see a
circuit of shining ripple, caused by schools of fish that have come up
from the wealth in the depths below to help the sun to glisten,--a
sign of life, power, and abundance.

Like his great compeer, Milton, Dante fails of universality from want
of humor. Neither had any fun in him. This was the only fault
(liberally to interpret Can's conduct) that Dante's host, Can Grande
of Verona, had to find with him. The subjects of both poets
(unconsciously chosen perhaps from this very defect of humor) were
predominantly religious, and their theology, which was that of their
times, was crude and cruel. The deep, sympathetic earnestness, which
is the basis of the best humor, they had, but, to use an illustration
of Richter, they could not turn sublimity upside down,--a great feat,
only possible through sense of the comic, which, in its highest
manifestation of humor, pillows pain in the lap of absurdity, throws
such rays upon affliction as to make a grin to glimmer through gloom,
and, with the fool in "Lear," forces you, like a child, to smile
through warmest tears of sympathy. Humor imparts breadth and buoyancy
to tolerance, enabling it to dandle lovingly the faults and
follies of men; through humor the spiritual is calm and clear enough
to sport with and toss the sensual; it is a compassionate, tearful
delight; in its finest mood, an angelic laughter.

Of pathos Dante has given examples unsurpassed in literature. By the
story of Ugolino the chords of the heart are so thrilled that pity and
awe possess us wholly; and by that of Francesca they are touched to
tenderest sympathy. But Ugo